'Philistines' call for censorship but BBC's film was a 'mirror to society'

Do we know how to watch a documentary? Are we familiar with the nature of the medium? Going by some of the responses to Leslie Udwin’s ‘India’s Daughter’, it seems that we obviously have a long way to go before we come to terms with our visual philistinism.

And for once, let’s not put all the blame on the Government. This time, the demand to ban also came from left-liberal feminists and television news channels, which have, in the past, raged against censorship.

It was horrifying how quickly some commentators took an antagonistic position without even having seen the film.

The demand to ban 'India's Daughter' came from left-liberal feminists and television news channels, which have, in the past, raged against censorship, writes Palash Krishna Mehrotra

The biggest objection against the film was that the rapists do not show any remorse. This is a curiously wishful argument.

A rapist will speak like a rapist. It’s not the director’s fault that the perpetrator justifies his actions and does not feel that he did wrong.

She cannot be expected to put words in his mouth. This is not a feature film. It cannot follow a script. Is the problem here then that some are upset that the rapists did not say what we wanted them to say? What if they were repentant and filled with remorse? Would it have been okay then?

Technique

Some have objected to the way the film has been shot. They have a problem with the camera techniques and the voice-over, which they feel, sensationalise the issue.

The film ‘jazzes up’ rape and panders to our voyeuristic curiosity. Udwin should have interrupted the rapist and raged against him on camera, rather than listening to him quietly, giving him a voice.

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Udwin is making a film here and she has the right to use the techniques at her disposal to construct a watchable narrative.

Tears, sunsets, leaping flames and suitable somber background music are part of this. At one point the camera zooms in on the tiger in ‘Life of Pi’, the last film that the victim watched.

The tiger’s roar chillingly anticipates the brutalities that human man-eaters will soon inflict on her.

Udwin here is only following cinematic convention in order to make her narrative more effective. In fact, our news channels use these techniques all the time – the background music manipulates, the voice-over judges and hectors and preaches, not to forget that the entire show is sponsored by a corporate.

Everyone is making money out of someone’s tragedy, as well as the citizen’s (read viewer’s) moral indignation and anger. No one has a problem with that.

There was also a feeling in some quarters that the film had, in Venkaiah Naidu’s words, ‘defamed India’.

On the contrary, what really showed us in a poor light was the act of banning the film, serving a restraining order on the BBC, and hounding the producers – a clear case of shooting the messenger, or as Udwin out it: “You are only shooting yourselves in the foot.”

It made the world ask: is India really a free country? Does this film give the rapists a platform? Yes, it does and there’s nothing wrong with that. Giving a platform is not glorifying the person.

The film doesn’t turn the rapist into a celebrity. It simply puts him under the microscope and studies him. This is how a rapist thinks and speaks.

If anyone finds himself empathising with the things he says, then that person needs to confront the rapist within them.

Murderer

Truman Capote explores the mind of a murderer in ‘In Cold Blood’. ‘Silence of the Lambs’ is an unflinching examination of the mind of a serial killer.

We need to understand pathologies, both individual and societal (the woman is a diamond, a flower, a box of sweets) if we are to do anything constructive to fix these pathologies.

Mukesh Singh's comments in the BBC film have prompted calls for the documentary to be banned

‘India’s Daughter’ is not just about the rapists. For the first time, a concrete picture emerges of the young woman. It was time someone rescued her from the abstractions of being ‘The Victim’.

Here is a young girl in the city, chasing her dreams, working nights at the call-centre to pay for her education.

Her former tutor tells a revealing anecdote that gives us an insight into the kind of person she was.

Once when she was in a market a boy snatched her purse and ran away. The boy was caught. When the police started to beat him up, she intervened and took the boy aside.

Truth

She asked him why he’d done it. He said he also wanted a life where he could eat hamburgers and wear nice clothes like ‘you people’. She bought him all he wanted and more. She asked him to stay away from crime. She could have walked away.

Instead, she wanted to understand why the boy did what he did. That’s all this is film is trying to do too.

Her parents have no problem with the film. Her father is on record as saying: ‘What is wrong is showing a mirror to society? Why are we not ready to accept the bitter truth? Everyone should watch it to know and understand what is ailing in our society.’

If the parents don’t have a problem, why should anyone else?

The writer is the author of The Butterfly Generation

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'Philistines' call for censorship but BBC's film was a 'mirror to society'